# Epic Practices

Learn best practices for Epics including size, duration, and creating Epic Templates from Story Templates.

## Epic Planning Strategies

Start by defining the outcome your Epic is meant to achieve, not just the work it contains. Align each Epic to a clear customer or business goal, and break it into small, testable Stories that deliver incremental value. Keep scope flexible by reviewing Epics regularly, adjusting priorities as new insights or feedback emerge. This helps teams avoid over-planning while still maintaining a strong strategic direction.

## How much work should an Epic include?

An Epic has a good size when it covers an achievable goal – “Add Slack integration for Custom Fields”, for example – while being somewhere between 1-4 weeks' worth of work.

_Tip: If you’d like a place to put all of your miscellaneous bug fixes, quick wins, etc., use Labels and a Shared Space on the Stories page to see these all in one place._

## Epic Progress

Epic progress helps teams stay aligned on larger initiatives by tracking how work is moving beyond individual Iterations. By monitoring associated Stories, teams can understand what has been completed, what remains, and how changes in scope impact delivery. Progress is measured not only by completed Stories, but also by newly added work, ensuring a more realistic view of how close an Epic is to completion. This visibility allows teams to proactively adjust priorities, communicate updates with stakeholders, and keep large initiatives on track. Update your Epic's Health on the Epic detail page view to make those status visible in roadmap view and your team's connected slack channel.

## Using Spaces for Epic Monitoring

On the Stories page, you can create Spaces that will make it quick and easy to view Stories related to the Epics you are monitoring progress on. This setup provides a clear view of which Stories still need to be added to an Iteration for each Epic.

Note: this works best in single Workflow setups as the Stories page is Workflow-specific.

## Tips for Team Collaboration

Encourage cross-functional collaboration by keeping Epics transparent and accessible to everyone involved. Use comments, linked Stories, and updates to create a shared source of truth and reduce context switching. Regular check-ins, async updates, and clearly defined ownership ensure alignment, while open communication helps teams adapt quickly as priorities evolve.

## Creating Epic Templates

In Shortcut, we have [Story Templates](/help/stories/story-templates) that allow you to create Stories from a pre-formatted template, saving you and your team time and effort on commonly written Stories. If you find that you are building commonly structured Epics, while we currently do not have a specific Epic Template functionality, we do have a creative workaround using a Story Template as the base, which can provide a good starting point.

### Suggested Configuration

Create a Story Template that is a solid base for the information you need. Start by creating a Story and within the Story card, add:

| Core                                                                                        | Optional                                                             |
| ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Title                                                                                       | Due Date for the Story (which will become the Due Date for the Epic) |
| Description                                                                                 | Labels (become Epic Labels)                                          |
| Sub-Tasks (which will become Stories) with Sub-Task Owners (which will become Story Owners) | Followers (become Epic Followers)                                    |

Once you feel it captures the bulk of what you want, **save** the Story Template as _"Recurring Epic Template,"_ for example.

* Whenever you need that particular Epic created with all the Stories (with or without Story Owners), Followers, Labels, etc., create the Story using the respective template.

### Creating Epic from Template <a href="#h_01hx0ggvyx3q95s3fy9kpfc2qr" id="h_01hx0ggvyx3q95s3fy9kpfc2qr"></a>

Create a Story using the "New Recurring Epic" Template, select the three dots in the top-right of the card, and select **Convert Story to Epic**. This will start the process of converting that Story into an Epic.